Abstract

So much has been said in recent decades about the ‘polycratic’, chaotic, un-bureaucratic and ad hoc nature of the NS regime. This interpretation has had a long academic ancestry dating back to the years of the Second World War. It was Franz Neumann who, in the early 1940s, described the administrative structures and practices of the NS state as a ‘behemoth’ — a network without unity of purpose or direction:

I venture to suggest that we are confronted with a form of society in which the ruling groups control the rest of the population directly, without the mediation of that rational though coercive apparatus hitherto known as the state. This new social form is not yet fully realized, but the trend exists which defines the very essence of the regime … In fact, except for the charismatic power of the Leader, there is no authority that co-ordinates the four powers [party, army, bureaucracy, industry], no place where the compromise between them can be put on a universal valid basis.1

Keywords

Foreign Minister State Secretary Institutional Position Party Event Monday Evening

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